I've gone through several Halomaps threads, sent Halomaps PMs and attempted to add two fellow modders on Windows Live Messenger, and still no full solutions. So I'm here to try another method, actually showing some progress. I didn't want to reveal this so soon, so as not to disapoint anyone if I give up (which is very possible), but I see no other way of getting further with the project.
What you see here is the campaign menu screen, the only other screen I have worked on (and the only one near completion) is the main menu itself (no pics sorry, this is the only pic I have on this computer). Anyway, down to the questions.
As you can see on the right hand side of the picture the level select list is visible on this screen, however I would like to make those invisible and the buttons un-clickable(and un-enter-key-able) unless you hit the "Mission:" button.
I have been thinking long and hard about this and decided the best way would probablly to make each list item (button) do a "replace self with widget" to a dummy button (that is invisible and does nothing) but I can't figure out how to make more than one of them switch (I tried one or two things, I think maybe managed to switch two of them once, but anything I expect to switch all of them either does nothing (the widgets don't even switch) or causes an EXCEPTION.
UI buttons can run scripts, so if there is a script command that can tell widgets to do their "replace self with widget" that should solve the problem, but I can't find such a script command.
An alternative would be to make the widget containing all of the level buttons (the "solo_level_select_list.ui_widget_definition" widget) switch itself instead, but everytime I try to make it do that, EXCEPTION.
Ok, so that's the first question out of the way, but there's more.
Does anyone know how to take the colour select list (the vertical list of buttons in the middle of the screen that you click to change your colour) and make it into a spinner list (like on the vehicles screen of edit gametypes (where it says "NONE, 1, 2, 3" or "4" and you press the arrow to toggle between them). I've tried, and failed, several times.
How does the game tell which multiplayer map is which? (it isn't the map name, because all custom maps are treated the same way and battlecreak is beavercreak.map (or was it the other way round) yet the game still knows which name and picture to assign to each map.
Finally (I think) I'm planning on adding support for multipule campaigns, I hear it is possible to get the game to recognise campaign maps other than a10-d40 (see This Halomaps Topic). Any idea how this would be done? For this I would also need to check if the maps are present, and grey out buttons if they aren't (can the game read an external text file (which I would try and write a program to make) to find things like that out?) Also I've noticed sp maps showing up in the mp menu, and starting them from the mp screen crashes the game. Is them showing up on the mp map list screen avoidable?
See This Halomaps Topic for some discusion on these questions which may help explain the problems a little better.
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Update (23rd/June/2009): - Update: I found a workable compromise a while back for that solo level select list, which was to close
all the level name list icons when you select one, to start with they closed all right, but the level you selected wasn't selected, if you see what I mean. Now though, the level will select but sometimes I get an exception, at the momment I'm planning to do a public beta/alpha test in the future in the hope somebody can find a solution. Until then, here's an animted gif to keep you informed, and to explain something else I need help with:
Sorry for the very bad quality, imageshack won't take files bigger than 1.5MB I think. I can try uploading my first, less compressed, attempt (at 5.85MB) to filefront if anyone wants to see that in better quality. Now, onto needing help, as you can see I have achived the effect I was aiming for. However there is more than just the random exceptions, seeing the results I have decided this still isn't good enough, when I hover over each level name I'm wanting the left-hand coloumn to update, any ideas how I can make it do that?
PS: The HALO bsp is placeholder, I plan to get or make something else in the future. The still on the campaign menu background might be swapped out too. The quit screen (apart from the background bitmaps) is still very much a WIP, and more work might be done on the other screens too. Other menu screens are all unchanged from their default HALO style at the moment, apart from a new gradient background bitmap on the load saved game screen and a failed attempt at a player colour spinner list on the player colour selection screen. EDIT: Something I forgot to say: Also as you can see in the .gif I've decided my attempt at a cursor bitmap was disapointing so I took the Delta Halo UI's cursor off one of their screenshots, so credit for that goes to whoever made it, not me. You can see from the static image above what my cursor was like, it was a bitmap from HALO 2 that I edited (there's other (most of which are tweaked) HALO 2 bitmaps in there too, (eg. the quit screen backgroud) so I can't take credit for everything.)
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Time for a little reveal. I had been aiming to release this today (Bungie Day 09 (we're now about 1 hour into July the 7th here in the UK)), however I've been far too slow, so you get the afore-mentioned, exception hunt (alpha test) instead. Hope you like it, AND READ THE README!
Originally Posted by Rhydgaled
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